


Bound By A Thread

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-28
Updated: 2006-02-28
Packaged: 2018-08-16 00:32:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8079811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: T'Pol's old suit, her new suit, and all the things they started. (08/31/2003)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

  
Author's notes: Spoilers, 2.26 "The Expanse."  
  
It's 2am and I can't keep my eyes open. I'm just posting this so I can move on with my life. It's extremely non-linear and I apologize if it's tough to read. Die, tenses, die. This was just one plotbunny who refused to be good and die. Just some lightweight lesbianism, it's new for me.  


* * *

Ensign Hoshi Sato was not often prone to body-image problems. Sure, she was on the short side, and she never got her mother's flashing eyes, but she had few problems with her looks, or her shape for that matter. Like some old movie said: "Flat here...but not so flat...here." No. Hoshi Sato was not prone to body-image problems.

Until she met a certain Sub-Commander. Hoshi had always known the Vulcans to dress in sweeping, lush robes in dignified colours, with the sleeves and hems long and wide, like kimono. The first time Sub-Commander T'Pol stepped on the bridge, wearing a skintight brown suit with a band under the bust, Hoshi's eyes had bugged out. That woman was stacked like a brick outbuilding. Luckily, T'Pol had made a beeline for Captain Archer, and Hoshi was able to pull her eyes back into her head and reel in her tongue. She hunched over her console, feeling chunky and unwomanly next to the exotic looking swizzle stick.

Over time, jealously blossomed into unadulterated lust. Everything T'Pol did, what she wore, how she moved and spoke...she was icy elegance on a plate. Grace Kelly in a bad mood, were Trip's exact words. Hoshi was developing a bad back from slouching at her post, not from envy, but in an attempt not to follow T'Pol's body around the bridge with her eyes. Of course, Hoshi's admiration manifested itself as animosity; one way sexual tension was just no fun at all, and frustrating as hell. She wasn't proud of her behavior towards T'Pol, swearing at her in Vulcan and generally being a bitch, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do when she can't do who she wants to do.

The shit hit the fan she got drunk with Malcolm and Trip one night. And conversation turned to the lady they wanted to see in a swimsuit. Or in Hoshi's case, a miniskirt and red stilettos. Trip had voted for a string bikini, and Malcolm had described some thong-back, low cut creation. Hoshi didn't have the heart to point out that T'Pol would never stay put in the tops they had imagined, so she just sipped her drink and smiled.

"Ya think they're real?" Trip had slurred.

"What?" Hoshi mumbled.

"T'Pol. Ya think she's," he snickered. " _all_ natural?"

"Ooh, definitely." Malcolm had said, his eyes still closed. "She's too perfect to be artificial."

"N'way." Hoshi shook her head, and closed her eyes when she got dizzy. "They're too high."

"Wazzat mean?"

"Too high. On her chest. Like they could poke her in the chin."

The two men had laughed uproariously at the image of T'Pol's face buried up to the nose in her own cleavage. "Why, Ensign Sato, you've been checkin' out the Cub-Sommander."

"Aw shaddup, Trip." She hiccupped. "'Sides, the way she stands, how could I not?" Hoshi stood uneasily and posed like T'Pol: chest out, ass perky. "She's like...Miss 'look-at-my-boobs'!"

Malcolm guffawed at her antics. "Good Lord, Hoshi. T'Pol may be a score prettier than you, but you're definitely more fun to have around."

Hoshi had wrinkled her nose at him and poured another drink.

She wasn't that surprised when she heard that Malcolm and Trip had gone for each other. After all, you could only share so many near death situations with a person before your image of them began to shift. But even though they were as happy as clams together, they didn't stop teasing Hoshi about T'Pol.

"So, you see T'Pol bend over today?"

"Oh, yes, and she was facing away from me. The view was—"Here, Malcolm kissed the tips of his fingers like an over-amorous Italian chef and winked at Hoshi.

The next day at lunch, Hoshi reached her breaking point.

"...and then I turned around, and she damn near pushed her tits inta my back when she bent ta look at the readout..."

"Well, like we said, 'Miss These-Are-My-Breasts'."

"'Xactly. And then..."

"That's it! I've had enough of this! Look, Commander This-Is-My-Crotch-Isn't-It-Nice, I'm dealing with this the best I can, and I don't need your jokes. And you, Malcolm 'Package Inspector' Reed, shouldn't be egging him on. I already know this is a stupid thing, guys. I know."

"We don't think it's stupid, Hosh." Trip looked apologetic. Malcolm, wearing a twin expression, nodded. "We...we think it's cute. And kinda hot." Malcolm blushed and looked down, but nodded again.

Hoshi blinked, a pained look on her face, and then dropped her head into her hands. "I was doing fine. I was getting over her. Why'd you have to go and feed me?"

"Oh. Sorry, Hoshi." They were both grinning. She glared.

Then something awful happened. Earth got attacked, and T'Pol was recalled from Enterprise. Of course, there were things in between, but Hoshi wasn't paying quite as much attention to those. Then something really awful happened. T'Pol was staying, and she got a new suit. It was toothpaste blue and tighter than before. It was low cut, with a tiny little collar and _no_ boob supporter. Luckily, she again headed straight for Archer upon appearing on the bridge, and Hoshi's whispered "Yum" went undetected. The Captain, to his credit, only kept his gaze unwaveringly on T'Pol's face for their entire conversation, and only allowed himself a low whistle and a shared look with a glazed Malcolm when T'Pol had retreated into the lift

"How do you like T'Pol's new clothes?" Malcolm sat down next to Hoshi with a cup of tea.

"Looks like she's covered in pureed Andorian." Malcolm chucked tiredly. "Hey, where's Trip?" He pressed his lips together in a melancholy expression and shrugged, so Hoshi decided not to push and tried to steer the conversation.

"You didn't by any chance increase the gravity, did you?" She asked.

He looked puzzled. "No, why?"

"You didn't notice?" She cupped he hands under her chest and lowered them abruptly, indicating either an increase in mass or a loss of support.

"Oh. Right." Hoshi was glad when he started to laugh a little. "I suppose she looks a little more natural now. Must have been the suit."

The laughed softly and gradually stopped, caught up in things slightly more important that T'Pol's breasts.

"I suppose I ought to check the environmental systems as well." Malcolm started again.

"Oh? Why?"

"You didn't notice? She was a little—" He held up two fists, chest height, and stuck his index fingers straight out in front of him. "I hadn't noticed it was so chilly on the bridge."

They laughed again, but their joviality didn't hold out, so they retired from each other, Malcolm worrying about Trip, and Hoshi worrying about dying young.

The next thing Hoshi knew, her hair was cropped short, and her eyebrows, unattended, had grown back in to their natural Asian fullness. There was scar that ran from her bottom lip to her chin. She spent most of her time in engineering, as Communications had become a slow department, and she had learned to be a skillful, resourceful engineer. She had finally developed her mother's angry flash, as well as a haunted steeliness that rivaled Malcolm's.

T'Pol, like everyone else onboard, had undergone transformation as well. Day by day, her face had become a little more haggard, her lips a little paler. But her posture never suffered. The day they returned to earth, with Captain Archer fighting for his life in Sickbay, T'Pol had been perched regally at the Science console, calmly carrying out Acting-Captain Tucker's orders. And no one could tell that it was only recently that she had regained that calm. She had made it through the ordeal by the force of her sheer will. And the help of friends.

"Sub-Commander?" Newly made Lieutenant Junior Grade Sato poked her head into T'Pol's dark quarters. T'Pol was never late for a shift. Never. In fact, she was always 2 minutes and 3 seconds early. "T'Pol, are you here? Sub-Commander?"

"Go away."

"What's wrong? Can I come in? May I turn on the lights?" Hushed mumbles were her only answer. "Computer, lights."

"Why do you call me Sub-Commander?" T'Pol was seated in a corner, her old brown suit ripped to shreds on the floor before her. Her eyes were troubled, staring at nothing "I am not a Sub-Commander. I'm nothing. I do not exist."

Hoshi knelt on the floor next to her. "You exist." She said in Vulcan. "You are here. I'm looking at you. You occupy space; you have mass. You have relationships with the people on this ship and they have relationships with you. You have affected countless timelines and realities. Without you, things would be very different." She thought it best to appeal to T'Pol's logic.

"The Vulcan Science Directorate has stated that time travel does not exist." The words were monotone, spoken by rote.

"They are wrong. We have traveled through almost five minutes of time since I entered this room. And even so, you exist. Will you move back to the bed? You should rest."

She nodded, and Hoshi coaxed T'Pol back into the bed.

"Sato to Archer."

"Archer here."

"T'Pol regrets that she will not be making her shift. She's resting now, but I think she should report to sickbay."

"Understood. I'll send Phlox to her quarters. You are needed on the bridge, Lieutenant."

"Yes Sir. I'll be there as soon as Doctor Phlox arrives." She closed the comm.

"You speak like me now." T'Pol was sitting up in bed, watching Hoshi with hooded eyes.

"And you speak like me." Hoshi sat on the edge of the bed.

Some days later, T'Pol was back on duty, but depending heavily on Lieutenant Sato. While the rest of the crew were battling the anarchy and horror of their lives, T'Pol clung to the shreds of her logic and composure, barely making it through a shift before her erratic emotions undid her. The day Hoshi caught a glimpse of the four bleeding half moons on T'Pol's palm, she moved into T'Pol's large cabin and removed all the sharp objects. Caring for the unstable Vulcan was as much for her as it was for T'Pol. The two women drew strength and peace from each other, silently holding each other against the endless storm.

They were all commended and lauded upon their return to Earth. Both Hoshi and T'Pol had stood stoically as they were awarded some or another order of bravery and honor, their eyes much different then the last time they were on Earth. Very different. Forever different.

Hoshi followed T'Pol back to Vulcan when the crew dispersed, no questions asked. A few years later, they moved back to Earth. Neither woman was wholly anything anymore, T'Pol too passionate and fierce for her own people and Hoshi irreconcilable with the self-absorbed flippancy of the human race. They lived in Nevada, in a two-bedroom apartment. In fact, even in T'Pol's shipboard cabin, they had spent countless nights twined together, but it had been about comfort, not desire.

One day, when Hoshi's hair had grown down to the small of her back, T'Pol turned to her and said,

"Hoshi, you are my life mate. I did not intend for it to happen, but you have become a constant in my life. I will never leave you. You are a part of me."

Hoshi smiled slightly. "I love you too, T'Pol." That night, they made love in T'Pol's bed.

"I thought you only had sex every seven years." Hoshi propped herself up on one elbow, her hair flowing over T'Pol's bare shoulder.

T'Pol's eyes were bright. Hoshi loved those hazel eyes, the only part of T'Pol's face that showed emotion. But what emotion. She could have been a silent screen star. "Every seven years, we must mate. In the meantime, however, we do what we please. Celibacy in the interim is advocated and praised, but sexual activity is not forbidden or impossible. Think about it, Hoshi. It would be difficult to find a partner experiencing pon-farr at the same time."

"Oh. Okay." She smiled and pulled T'Pol close. "T'Pol, have you ever heard of stilettos?"


End file.
